Scuffle at BHU During Tree-Felling Protest

VARANASI: Students and security personnel jostled outside the Banaras Hindu University vice-chancellor's office during a protest over the ₹2.65 crore penalty linked to tree felling on campus.

The students reached the central office on Tuesday seeking a meeting with the vice-chancellor and an institutional response to a memorandum they said had been submitted about a month earlier. After an argument at the entrance, security staff moved the group outside and closed the channel gate. Students then raised slogans and continued demanding an answer.

Those named in the report included Satyam Singh, Aman Maurya, Nitesh Rai, Vivart Singh, Nishant and Ashwini. Members of the group said they had repeatedly approached the vice-chancellor's and registrar's offices over the previous 12 days without receiving a substantive reply. Staff reportedly acknowledged that the application had reached the vice-chancellor.

The underlying dispute concerns a large penalty associated with the cutting of trees, but the brief report did not reproduce the order, identify the authority that imposed it or set out BHU's legal position. Those documents are essential to understanding who authorised the work, what conditions were allegedly breached and whether the university has appealed. The students' characterisation should not be treated as a final adjudication of institutional liability.

Campus protest and campus security both require restraint. Students have a right to seek information and demonstrate peacefully; security personnel have a duty to protect offices and prevent forced entry. A closed gate and unanswered memorandum can escalate frustration, while pushing and crowding can quickly produce injuries or accusations that are difficult to reconstruct from a short clip.

BHU can lower the temperature by publishing a factual note: the date and nature of the penalty, the trees and site involved, action taken against any responsible unit, restoration or plantation commitments and the status of any appeal. If the matter is sub judice or under inquiry, the university can say so without disclosing protected material.

Student representatives, in turn, should nominate a small delegation, record the questions in writing and agree to a timed meeting. That creates a public trail without turning every visit into a confrontation at the gate.

The group warned that its movement would be intensified through democratic means if no concrete action followed. No serious injury or arrest was reported in the account reviewed by Dalimss News.

The immediate story is a scuffle. The more important one is an information vacuum around a ₹2.65 crore environmental penalty. A university with BHU's public standing should be able to answer the second issue before it produces another version of the first.